art makes us more alive.

Interview With Painter Tim Vermeulen

El Sueno de la Razon by Tim Vermeulen

A Damp and Drizzly Day in November from the Moby Dick Series by Tim Vermeulen

The Whiteness from the Moby Dick Series by Tim Vermeulen

Welcome to my first artist interview in a series I hope to do every Monday for the next three months. This is the work of Tim Vermeulen. Tim and I were together in the art department at Calvin College in the early '80s and then also together at the University of Illinois for the Masters Painting Program. When I was looking for a best man to stand up at my wedding 25 years ago today, Tim was the obvious choice.

Tim tell us what are the sources that you keep returning to over the years for inspiration towards painting?

15th century northern renaissance is #1 but I’ve found inspiration in certain works and movements in every century since.

Tell us about the formative experiences in your childhood that continue to inform or charge your work today?

My father was a funeral director and some of my formitive years were spent living in a funeral home with a morgue in our basement. For some years I considered this the most important biographical feature of my formation. However, in a grad school critique I said my work was often about life and death and one of my professors said she thought my work was far more concerned with salvation and damnation. I came to realize tha tbeing raised in a somewhat dysfunctional and strictly Calvinist home was far more important to my development than the morgue in the basement.